Because female leads are awesome.Why write a book with all...

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Because female leads are awesome.

Why write a book with all women? If I learned one thing from being an 80s baby and growing up in the 90s, it’s that women are damned good at kicking ass.

Nowadays, any form of media with even the slightest hint of a female protagonist (Or antagonist for that matter), is held up and celebrated as a sign of diversity and/or breaking the mold. That’s not something I particularly disagree with. We do need more females in leading roles, be it in movies, television, books, comics or video games.

The PULSE series itself was partially birthed by my desire to create something in that very space. But, it’s important that we don’t forget that despite being far more infrequent a role than the male counterpart, there are still a plethora of fantastic heroines to take inspiration from.

Which is sure as hell what I did.

My favorite movie is Aliens. 

Not the first one which is scary as f**k, or the third one that is as boring as the others are great (also, let’s pretend that there are no more movies after Alien 3). I’m talking about the middle movie. The one where Sigourney Weaver kills 100,000 aliens, their babies and their mother with a flamethrower, a power loader, and a nuke. I wanted to start with a character just like hers in the PULSE series, but to be honest she was actual too awesome to be considered.

Skip forward to the late 90s where a certain Buffy the Vampire Slayer was rampant on our TV screens. Buffy was a leader, but a student. Strong, but vulnerable. Good looking, but with a terrible love life. She was also great at punching people in the face, which was my favorite part.

My main character, Stella, is unashamedly Buffy-like in inspiration. Her looks. Her quips. Her kickassery. Joss Whedon might as well have written this book. Then again, the last heroine I watched before writing The Trial was arrogant element-bending Avatar Korra. So that’s probably where all of Stella’s cockiness, and her subsequent redemption arc, comes from.

But still, Buffy wasn’t my true love. (It wasn’t Faith either. Although we all liked her more than Buffy. There’s no shame in admitting it) No, it was Xena: Warrior Princess that first caught my eye. The way she would throw her Chakram and defy each and every law of physics. The way she would jump and hang in the air for 10 or 15 seconds. That weird battle-cry thing that she did to announce herself. And that episode where she single-handedly killed all of the Gods.

I had one blogger who stopped reading my book halfway. He said the action was ‘a bit unrealistic.’ I based almost every scene off different episodes of Xena. Unrealistic? Pffft. No idea what he means by that. It all seems legit to me.

To some degree or other, every character in PULSE draws on the influences of the ass-kicking women that have adorned the media before them.

From Umbran witch Bayonetta to a Tomb Raiding Lara Croft. From Saga’s fugitive-mother Alana to the Inhuman Queen Medusa. From Vampiric Death-Dealer Selene to Vengeful Bride Beatrix Kiddo.

For those of you who have read The Trial, you know that there are only a small handful of characters to deal with. The sequel, Moonlighter, on the other hand, has an entire ensemble cast of badass women to deal with. There were so many amazing characters, some of them had to be cut from the final version. And I can’t wait for you to meet them all. 

In other words, I had to watch a lot of women beat the living s**t out of everyone to make these books possible. Who’d have thought that one day I’d be able to file it all under research?

Also. Stella uses a bow. So… you know… Hunger Games.